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Quantic Dream loses court case over employee harassment, Patrick Klepek highlights games and developer accounts of how misspellings in code effected them and the time it can take to find them, Games As Literature and game composer Jake Butineau's analysis of Transistor, Dead Cells developer on paying every employee the same wage, Noah Caldwell-Gervais' Max Payne retrospective, Stephanie Chan on how the Tehran Game Convention shows global politics won’t stop gaming’s growth, Arc System Works releases music video to celebrate 30th anniversary, ex-moderator Christopher Williams explains how company policies and procedures protect the worst abusers at the expense of players and employees, part two and three of Caty McCarthy's series on the evolution of game writing, Luke Winkie covers what it is like to launch an indie game in 2018, James Batchelor on the results of game industry careers surveys, and more.

"Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about people with power at the top and people at the bottom with none", he replied. "That power can come from money, hierarchies, technology and violence. The original Cyberpunk 2020 setting, like the setting of The Witcher stories, was a complex critique of the author's world, and we don't shy away from that in our games. On the contrary I think it's one of the things that sets us apart [...] Cyberpunk is an inherently political genre and it's an inherently political franchise."

You might be aware of this by now, but Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be a first person game. What it’s also going to have is a character customization toolset, that lets you alter the physical appearance of who you’ll be playing is- you don’t often see these two things in a single game at the same time. If you’re playing in first person, you don’t see much of your character other than their hands, so why bother with altering their appearance, right? In the past CDPR has addressed this issue but in a new interview, one of their developers has further clarified why they are going with this direction.

The war between Demons and Angels takes you to hell and back in this third person action game. You are Desmond, the one man with demonic powers who can decide the fate of our world by joining either side of the conflict.

Battlefield V’s epic Grand Operations mode, described by EA as “the ultimate multiplayer experience”, will be available at launch after all. EA/DICE updated a post on the game’s website describing the mode and how it will play, and said that plans have changed since July 9, when the post was originally written. Then, the plan was to introduce Grand Operations "shortly after launch," but the update July 27th revised the post to clarify that the massive mode will be available when Battlefield V launches this fall.

Sean Krankel, founder and CEO of development team Night School Studio, sounds surprised when I tell him his company is nearly four years old. In his head, he says, it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. In his head, he says, it’s still weird to not be the studio just making the company’s first game, Oxenfree.

This past E3 I got a chance to play a demo of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the third installment in the series reboot since its initial debut back in 2013. In this latest sequel, the game travels to the legendary city of Paititi, blending aspects of both Mayan and Incan cultures as the backdrop to Lara Croft’s adventures in Peru. With input from academics and historians, the developers have blurred the line between the factual and the fictitious, skirting the edge of plausibility to make a game that feels real, but without the added weight and time needed to faithfully create a more authentic experience. It raises the question if cultural appropriation can occur within a fantasy scenario. If so, does accuracy do more harm than good?

A new trailer has been released for Yakuza Kiwami 2. In this one and a half minute video, we get to see interactions between Kazuma Kiryu and Kaoru Sayama. She is a detective with the Osaka police department who ends up spending quite a bit of time with Kiryu over the course of the game.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is headed Westward this September and Sega put in a lot of localization work that includes full English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish subs as well as full English voicing. Sega of America associate PR manager Jonathon Stebel and associate localization producer and lead for Valkyria Chronicles 4, Andrew Davis, took to the PlayStation Blog to dive inside the direction of the game’s English voice-over sessions.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice had its own area at ACGHK 2018 – a small room where around 9-10 people at a time could go inside and watch the latest gameplay footage of the upcoming From Software game. Unfortunately, both video recording and photo taking were restricted, so here is a recap of what can be seen in the gameplay, and what can be gleaned from it.

Jump Force mashes up the characters from some of anime’s most popular franchises, and it was no surprise to see Bleach officially confirmed for the roster last month. Now we’ve got a trailer showcasing how the Shinigami - or Soul Reapers, if you’re feeling nasty - will look in action when the brawler hits the scene next year.

We got to play the Resident Evil 2 Remake demo at E3 2018, and as long time fans of Resident Evil, we were really impressed by what we saw. Sure, things are a little different, but we think that'll not only please old-school Resident Evil fans, but it might just tempt some new RCPD recruits too. New RE2 Remake gameplay captured on PS4 Pro.

It seems Sunless Skies, the narrative-building steampunk exploration game, is going to be wandering the uncharted darkness of Early Access a bit longer than anticipated. Developer Failbetter Games has announced Sunless Skies will now be launching in January, four months after the planned September launch.

CCP Games - the studio behind Eve Online - is working on a brand-new “action-MMO” built in Unreal Engine 4. The game hasn’t been formally announced. Instead, this news comes as part of a partnership between Epic and CCP, which will see the Eve dev producing all its unannounced, upcoming titles exclusively in Unreal 4.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is gone. Both the first action-RPG and its Civil War-themed sequel have been delisted from all digital storefronts including Steam, without any specific warning. If you already own the games, you’re safe to continue downloading and playing them, but if not, you’re going to need to hit eBay or the like for an old physical copy.

The game industry is not exactly known for valuing workers. Big studios are rife with soul-destroying crunch and end-of-project layoffs. French studio Motion Twin, developer of the Castlevania-inspired roguelike Dead Cells, is trying something different: Workers own and manage the company. There is no boss.

It appears as though Jay Pinkerton has returned to Valve after spending a year away from the company. Some sharp-eyed redditors and Twitter users noticed that his name was back on Valve’s ‘People’ page earlier this week.

Yesterday, an issue that’s been simmering below the surface of Steam for a few weeks came to a head: Unscrupulous developers were releasing games that contained dummy items masquerading as Team Fortress 2 and DoTA 2 rarities that sell for hundreds of dollars. Now Valve has addressed the issue.

Steam numbers are on a downward trend, and it’s a much bigger decline than we’ve seen in the past. What’s to blame? As with a lot of industry trends at this point, you can probably point to battle royale as one major contributor, though that may not be the full story.

Nvidia’s GTX 1180 graphics card is coming, and now we’ve got a good idea when, with a potential reveal on August 20 before Gamescom. The GeForce GPU’s release date is still under wraps, but the next-gen is set to launch around August - September.

"Controversial is good as long as it is grounded in ideas that are true and that are also are not harmful to anyone," he says. "We were trying to do that. Unfortunately some people might get offended in the process, and this is something that I personally regret, and because of that in the future we are going to approach that in a better way.

"The mistake we made with Beat Cop is that we were too far away from the time and the culture that was depicted in the game."

Recognizing that reality, Microsoft’s Packaging Design team faced a unique challenge in creating a box for the new Xbox Adaptive Controller, designed to accommodate gamers with limited mobility. The box for the device, which will be available for $99.99 in September through the Microsoft Store, needed to be as accessible as what was inside. It had to enable gamers with limited dexterity, who might be using just one hand or arm, to easily open the box and remove the controller. And it had to be as high-quality and aesthetically appealing as any other Xbox packaging.

The nonprofit Iran Computer and Video Games Foundation (IRCG) has wanted to bring international game developers to Tehran for over a decade, and it finally succeeded with the first Tehran Game Convention in 2017. The inaugural event drew larger crowds than the organization expected, and this year’s festival has only grown. It added the Gamistan Awards to recognize outstanding titles from all over the Middle East and North Africa as well as other emerging markets, and IRCG has plans to build up the event even more.

Earlier this year, a game called OpenSC2K was released on GitHub, claiming to be a free, open source version of Maxis’ classic. Turns out it wasn’t as open source as it could have been, though, because EA have had the game removed from the platform.

The inaugural season of the Overwatch League comes to a close this weekend. It’s been a long, winding, and at times downright weird road to the finals which now see two underdog teams face off for cash and glory.

Earlier this month, pro Dota 2 player Peter “PPD” Dager announced a surprising new venture: he’s forming a Dota league. Dubbed North American Dota Challengers League, the organization shifts the focus away from the upcoming International Dota 2 Championships, if only for a moment. And while third-party leagues already exist in the Dota scene, the NADCL hones in on an aspect that most others don’t.

This weekend, Overwatch League’s first season—at times thrilling and at others absolutely grueling—reaches its conclusion. The final showdown pits two inconsistent underdog teams, Philadelphia Fusion and London Spitfire, against each other in a match that just so happens to sum up the vibe of the whole season.

The first-ever winner of the Overwatch League season playoffs is the London Spitfire. After a rocky season spent wobbling between commanding victories and unexpected defeats, the Spitfire earned a $1,000,000 prize, as well as a silver gauntlet in the style of publisher Blizzard’s sword-and-sorcery roots. Their underdog opponents, the crowd-favorite Philadelphia Fusion, retreated with the number two title and what looked like a whole lot of heartache.

Dota 2’s annual championship, The International, has the biggest prize pool in all of esports – $21 million and counting. Unlike Overwatch League or the League Championship Series, The International doesn’t rely on big-name sponsors or media rights. Instead, it is almost entirely crowdfunded by fans, putting a democratic twist on professional gaming despite its massive scope. For fans, it’s the ultimate celebration of Dota 2, unsullied by corporate greed, even as it manages to pump more than $20 million into the game’s professional scene annually. But there’s another side to The International, one that makes Dota 2 a harsh place for tournaments, teams, and (most) players to scrape out a living. For all The International’s charms, there’s a lot of evidence that Dota 2’s premiere event is hurting, not helping, Dota 2 as a whole.

This target probably replied to that chunk of automated text, as most players do. Reporters usually say something akin to “Please help me” or, “Please make this stop.” We could only say “Sorry to hear that this is happening, please report it to the link above so we can investigate it.” Targets probably see this as “This mod is lazy and doesn’t want to do their job” which is not the case. We can’t because management says so. Even though we’re right there in chat, we’re not able to start helping.

This story is not another attempt to chronicle the activities of racist and misogynist men who harass women and people of color on social media and in multiplayer games.

Nor is it an existential inquiry into their particular niche in the video game community. Rather, this story asks: Where do they come from? Why they are here? And what allows them to stay?

What follows are interviews — under a variety of rubrics — with 11 writers and academics who have studied and published useful work on the problem of misogyny and racism in gaming and in popular entertainment. Most have experienced harassment and abuse from toxic gamers.

When I first began following Yik-Sian James Seow on Twitter, it was because he was the developer behind Steam Marines, a squad-based tactical roguelike that launched back in 2013. But today, I follow him for a completely different reason: The fascinating stories of his many Fallout characters.

This month marked the release of Mi’pu’mi Games’s The Lion’s Song on Nintendo Switch, a four part choice-based point and click game that takes place in Europe early in the 20th century. A game about choices, and secrets, and the unknown, it ponders the many paths our lives can take if but for the slightest change.

Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel about giant robots, political intrigue, and maybe even smooching the enemy. It combines evocative writing with a multi-perspective story that’s as engrossing as any anime.

The term “Dystopia” is thrown around all too often, usually as a uncritical hair-trigger response when describing something that looks remotely futuristic and glum. “Cyberpunk” suffers the same fate, especially whenever dark city streets are bathed in a rich, neon glow. For better or worse, Dontnod’s exploration of a Neo-Parisian society in the year 2084 ticks all of these boxes and then some, but in the midst of a sea of cliches, Remember Me’s segregated cityscape tells a more grounded story focused on the divisive impact technologically-guided societies can have on their populace. Set in a world where memories have become commodities, to be consumed as goods, altered at will, and influenced to change the perception of history, the oppressive nature of technology and the power it affords those at the top to sway and influence society is portrayed to its extremes, echoing our own world’s tendency for technological innovation to take priority over basic human welfare.

This is a full-spoiler critique and retrospective of Max Payne 1 and 2 by Remedy Games and also Rockstar's climactic Max Payne 3. It looks closely at how each game treats Max as a person, from archetype, to abstract metaphor, to cautionary tale. It looks at how the different design priorities tease out different Maxes who still, somehow, connect along a single arc of character.

Making a Metroidvania is an enormous design challenge. How do you let a player loose in an interconnected world, without them becoming lost or frustrated?

In this series, I'll be looking at key Metroid titles, and games inspired by the franchise, to see how this type of world is structured. Starting with Metroid 1, and its 2004 remake Metroid Zero Mission.

In this video, I take a deep dive into Civilization VI's evolving soundtrack. The music in the game changes as you move through different technological eras, growing in scope and complexity as your civilization grows the same way.

The first half of 2018 had loads of excellent indie games. Here are some of the best for Switch, Steam, PS4, and Xbox One. Hopefully at least one of these games will appeal to you. West of Loathing came out on PC in 2017, but the Switch release was 2018, so I'm counting it here.

The story of Firewatch is the story of a small team of veteran indie developers who wanted to try the impossible.

Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, the creators of The Walking Dead video game for Telltale, wanted to instead make a game that was all their own. So they set up Campo Santo, a brand new studio that existed to create a single game, about the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming.

In the late 1990s, few video game developers were as synonymous with PC role-playing games as Black Isle Studios. Established in 1996 as a subsidiary of Interplay Entertainment, Black Isle helped create and foster an array of beloved isometric RPG series, including Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout.

Why are linear games kept in the naughty corner of large parts of the industry? This video examines how—and if—fictional time plays a larger role in linear games compared to more open-ended ones, and why that can be a problem. It would seem that a more open-ended structure lets the player be part of what decides what, when, and how something happens, but the question is whether that's a good thing or if linear games simply more noticeably betray failures of dealing with time in fiction. We look at a bunch of different games, and how they deal with the rather abstract concept of time.

Mini-Read is a short-form series of games criticism published every other Thursday. Alongside it, I publish long-form criticism on a when-it's-ready basis.

Given that the channel has just hit its three year anniversary as well as 100k subs, I thought it'd be nice to go back and completely revamp the very first video I uploaded to the channel, giving those ideas the presentation I felt they deserved; how detective game Her Story feels uniquely postmodern in its presentation (it's unbearable, don't seek it out). Took waaay more work and research than previously anticipated but here we are. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for sticking with me.

Three episodes into People Make Games and Chris has become entirely self-indulgent in the topics he's researching. Here's the story of how Total War ended up on the telly as a show called Time Commanders.

“Under the surface, every game is political” – that’s what they say. My boy Sonic proves that this is bullshit. Upwards we climb through these platforming levels, fighting on the side of nature against machines. So, you think this is saying something about environmentalism? Think again, nerd.

With Star Citizen continuing not to release, many gamers are walking away and deciding to move on with their lives. Some, however, have embraced the uncertainty of the phenomenon, willing themselves to believe in a better world. Point & Clickbait sat down with the partners of these gamers to understand how they can be so supportive.

Doug Cockle might be the voice of Geralt, but Maciej Kwiatkowski has been The Witcher for a while now, having served as a combat advisor and motion-capture actor for the character throughout the series.